Ichabutt’s Tail, part 4: New Purpose

Yesterday’s story snippet involved a tragic event. We learned how Ichabutt’s great uncle Ichabob met an untimely demise after a piece of farming equipment fell on top of him. Sometimes, however, misfortune and fortune are intertwined.

Such was the case in this instance, for as fortune frowned upon Ichabob, it smiled upon his great nephew Ichabutt. The day after Ichabob was laid to rest at Sleepy Graves Cemetery, his lawyer paid a visit to Ichabutt’s house. There he informed the young man that his great uncle had left him his farm in his will.

As you can imagine, this unexpected turn of events changed Ichabutt’s life immediately. The death of his great uncle gave him a new life. Ichabutt wasted no time in packing his few belongings and moving out of his parents’ house to Ichabob’s farm.

Finally free from the cruelty and humiliation that his parents had dealt him on a daily basis all his life, Ichabutt flourished. He had been at the rock bottom of his life since dropping out of high school, but now he climbed steadily out of that pit by pouring himself into his new farm.

Ichabutt checked out every book on farming available at the Sleepy Hollow library. He determined to learn all that he could about how to raise crops, so that he would be ready to work his fields as soon as spring arrived. When his eyes glazed over from reading, he would go out and simply walk in his fields, simply marveling that they were his fields.